


Summer Lady/Winter King

by nerdzeword



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Art, Community: hp_drizzle, Digital Art, F/M, HP Drizzle Fest 2020, but like, fairy tale AU, i don't know what you would call this, legend, myth, very very loosely based on an old russian fairy tale, with less swamps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdzeword/pseuds/nerdzeword
Summary: The Summer Lady and the Winter King were never meant to meet.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 96
Collections: HP Drizzle Fest 2020





	Summer Lady/Winter King

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Susan for the very last minute beta. I owe you one.

The Summer Lady was well known among the Summer Lands for her kindness and the soft tenderness she awarded all under her care. Despite her title, The Summer Lady was not royalty; she held no power, and like the rest of her people, spent most of her days toiling away in fields and gardens, providing for those she loved. 

When the night came, chores done and families fed, she allowed herself the small comfort of losing her title in favor of curling up in her favorite armchair with a candle and one of the three books she had pinched pennies to acquire. Behind the closed doors of her simple cottage, she was merely Hermione: a girl who loved books and grew up too fast. 

The Winter King was exactly as people expected. He radiated an air of cold disinterest and ruled his kingdom with an icy fist. King was a title he had inherited - passed along from father to son for generations - but it was one he worked to bring honor to all the same. Despite his cold and unforgiving exterior, he cared deeply for his people and worked diligently to protect them from the icy winds of his heartland.

It was not until the end of the day when advisors were appeased, and all of the most pressing of work completed, that the king would let his cold mask slip away. Under the cover of the winter nights, the king was simply Draco: a boy who loved books and grew up too fast. 

The Summer Lady and the Winter King were never meant to meet. The Summer Kingdom was dangerously hot for those built to withstand the cold countenance of the Winter Kingdom. And the same was true for denisons of the winter lands - it was not safe for those who had not grown up amongst the frost. 

Oftentimes however, Fate has no care for what should be, instead only caring for what must be. It was Fate’s hand that led the young Summer Lady into the woods that day. Just as it was Fate’s touch that pulled the Winter King from his steed and down the hill into the forest below. 

It was a perfectly average day when Hermione found the young man injured and alone while searching for berries in the heart of the woods. The fact that she did not recognize him made no difference to her when faced with the sight of a soul in need, no older than her own fourteen years, and she wasted no time in gathering him onto her sled, and pulling him home with her. Slowly, with all of the patience she could muster, she nursed him back to health, barely taking the time to rest herself.

It was not until the fourth day of her tender ministrations, when the boy opened his eyes and pierced her with his silver eyes that she realized who she had brought into her home. Those eyes could only belong to the infamous young Winter King, known for killing innocents without remorse. Hermione was not one to judge a person merely on rumors however, and she continued to care for him for another five days, as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

When he was finally well enough to leave, he spared her nary a second glance as he pulled on his boots and trekked off in the direction of the Winter Kingdom. Hermione was sure that would be the last of it, resigned that she would never see his beautiful eyes and porcelain face again.

When The Winter King returned, it was an entire year later, and he looked every inch the king he was. He came to her bearing gifts of silk and silver. He thanked her in the formal way he had grown accustomed to greeting everyone he knew, but Hermione stopped him with a kind hand, and even kinder smile. She invited him in for dinner and talked to him about books. When the king left, he thought with wonder that he had somehow made himself a friend. 

Draco continued to visit his friend, when he could get easily away. At first it was only every couple of months, whenever he needed a break from his advisors and the stress of his responsibilities - though never in the summer. By the fourth year of their acquaintance, however, his visits had picked up and he found himself making the trip across the border once a week during the colder months. In only a few years' time, he had found himself turning to Hermione more and more for her sage advice on resolving disputes, or her thoughts on working with the lower classes he had no real way of connecting with. The friendship he had begun out of a sense of obligation had turned into one of the most important relationships in his life. 

In the fifth year, Draco finally succumbed to Hermione’s urging, and brought her back to the Winter Kingdom with him for a visit. He picked her up just as winter was reaching its close, and Hermione marvelled at how he lived, and the beautiful kingdom he ruled. Like Draco, she had obligations and people who depended on her, and thus couldn’t stay long however, in the time she was given, she learned how wrong the rumors of his coldness had been.

She learned that he did not kill indiscriminately, but only in order to maintain the delicate balance in the far north. She learned that he could not allow any infraction to go unpunished, lest others follow suit and end up falling prey to the unforgiving cold. Hermione knew what that sort of responsibility was like. Summer Lady was a title she wore with great pride, but it was not without its faults too. After all, heat could burn just as easily as it could heal. 

Before they had quite known what was happening, the two found that the years they spent together had irreparably changed them, and neither could remember a time when the other was not in their lives. It came to no surprise when their friendly visits slowly changed tune, until one day they awoke to find that they sang a completely new song. Not one to avoid the inevitable, Draco started to bring Hermione what could only be considered courting gifts - books from his personal library, glowing rocks that shone with the light of the moon from the steep mountain cliffs of the high north, and intricate flowers made of ice that would never melt.

Hermione gave him what little she could in return - light touches, soft smiles, gentle laughs. Draco treasured each and every one. On the eve of his twenty first year, when the Winter King’s advisors urged him to find a wife, Draco made no noise in protest, only stating that he would be the one to choose. 

However, when the Winter had once again come, allowing him to visit his beloved and finally ask her for her hand, he found her to be missing. Taken by a frightened rage, he stole into the night, after his love. 

He finally found her a few miles down the road, in the home of her friend. Except when he opened the door, it was not just her trusted friend there, but the entire village that has surrounded her, asking questions and demanding answers. Draco’s blood began to boil at the way these people were treating his love - as if she had not earned their trust over and over again throughout the years. 

They were so concerned with interrogating her on her life’s choices, that they failed to even notice the Winter King in the doorway, getting angrier by the moment. Only one person took notice of him immediately, and her face lit up. She wasn’t even bothered by the near feral glint in his eye that spoke of blistering cold and skies of ice to anyone who dared lay a hand on Hermione.

After all, The Summer Lady was not only warm breezes and cicadas chirping in the night; she was also the scorching rays of heat which could fell even the strongest of men, and the cracking of the earth as it crumbled to pieces in the wake of the sun’s bright rays. Hermione would do the same for him in a heartbeat. 

“Draco!” she greeted him with a smile, standing despite the protests of her friends, and rushing to his side.

It took only a single touch for the ice in his glare to melt into the soft drifting of snowflakes on a bright winter’s afternoon. 

“Hermione,” he greeted her in return. The others in the room could only stare at the pair, aghast. He knelt to the ground before her and gave her the gift he had spent so long tweaking to perfection.

“Marry me, Summer Lady. Become my queen.” To the others, it sounded like a demand, but to the one for whom the question was intended, it was a plea. Hermione knew the true weight of the gift she was being given as soon as the bright ring was slid onto her finger and the cold that had been seeping in through the walls of the cottage - despite the fire’s bright blaze - all but vanished.

“Oh Draco, my love, of course,” she told him with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face.

Years in the future, when they were known between both lands as being just and kind rulers, many of the people who had been present for the engagement would admit that they had no idea what could possibly have come from such an agreement. Nor did they understand how their Summer Lady could possibly have come to know the Winter King in the first place. But it was unanimously agreed by everyone who was witness to the proposal that the love they shared was real and palpable,and that it had warmed the very room they’d stood agape in. 

The two would go on to split their days between their two countries, going where they were needed, neither having to worry about the weather - for as long as they were together, the elements could touch them no more than the people who might have tried to come between them. 

They lived happily ever after.

So concludes the Tale of The Summer Lady and the Winter King.

  
  
  



End file.
